Last weekend I ran a trip up to the Lake District with my university’s expedition society. The aim of this trip was always to do some great scrambling and thankfully we got the weather as the wind was not too strong, it didn’t rain in the daytime and we even had some nice views on both days!
Last time I was in the lake district scrambling was 7 years ago where I remember climbing the grade 3*** route up Pinnacle Ridge with my parents and while we were at the top eating lunch we had a flypast by the red arrows. The routes we did this weekend were much easier but still very enjoyable and were the two grade 1*** routes in the Lake District. On Saturday we headed up Blencathra via Sharp Edge and down Hall’s Fell ridge which was a lovely route which actually took us a surprisingly small amount of time and we were finished in time for the rugby! The great thing about Sharp Edge is the view that you get of the ridge as you walk in and with people that had not done much scrambling before the slight disbelief as the ridge we were about to climb was enjoyable.
The initial plan for the Sunday was a walk up to Great Gable from Borrowdale where we were camping but due to the forecast of rain and hill fog it was decided that it would be far more enjoyable doing another scramble than a walk in the rain and mist. So we headed down to Great Langdale to climb Jack’s Rake which turned out to be a fantastic scramble. On the walk in I got bored walking so kept getting distracted by the rock and doing lots of extra scrambling which was great fun and added a lot of interest to the walk in. Once we got to Stickle Tarn we pointed out where we were scrambling to the group to slight disbelief as from the tarn it does just look like you are scrambling across a very exposed rock face, though when you get to the scramble it was clear that the exposure would be limited and there was not really any exposure on the climb as expected for a grade 1 scramble. At the top I chose to climb up a more ‘interesting’ route which I realised half way up was definitely a good example of exposure and very committing scrambling but the rock was fantastic and despite the holds being small they were very grippy so it was fine and lots of fun which certainly got the adrenalin flowing!
I am now looking forward to the summer when I plan on going back up to the lakes with a few friends to do some harder scrambling in the fantastic scenery that is on offer there as well as the other classic ridges as I only have vague memories of everything there despite having done loads due to being much younger when we did most of it.
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